Chapter 6 - THE MAN WHO NEEDED AN HEIR TO DIE
Matteo Moretti entered the boardroom smiling.
He was sixty-two, silver-haired, beautifully dressed and calm in the way men become calm when they have spent decades making other people afraid.
Dominic sat at the opposite end.
Victor stood behind him.
Three attorneys occupied the side wall.
And, to Matteo’s visible irritation, Detective Ortiz sat near the door.
“This is a family business meeting.”
Dominic answered.
“No.”
Matteo’s smile tightened.
“It has always been family business.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
The emergency meeting concerned voting control.
Matteo’s attorney argued Anna Moretti remained legally deceased.
No court had restored her identity.
No amended birth record existed.
No probate ruling recognized Lily Hayes as Anna.
Therefore, according to him, the succession provisions remained unchanged.
Dominic listened.
Then placed the DNA report on the table.
Matteo did not look at it.
“You found a girl with a similar scar.”
“My daughter.”
“Perhaps.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
The attorney continued.
“Genetic reports can be challenged.”
Victor almost laughed.
Dominic did not.
“Why are you scared of a six-year-old?”
Matteo finally looked at him.
“I’m protecting what your father built.”
“My father built enough things on graves.”
Silence.
Several directors looked down.
Matteo’s face hardened.
“You sound sentimental.”
“I found my daughter.”
“You found a weakness.”
Dominic smiled without warmth.
“There you are.”
Matteo leaned back.
For the first time, the polished uncle disappeared.
“My brother made the mistake of believing blood automatically made men worthy.”
Dominic stared.
“And you decided murder made you worthy?”
Matteo’s attorney stood.
“We’re done.”
Detective Ortiz remained still.
Matteo looked at her.
“Are you recording this?”
She smiled faintly.
“You should always assume someone is listening when discussing murder.”
Matteo laughed.
“I admitted nothing.”
“No.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“But you will.”
The first break came from Samuel Keene.
Victor found him alive in Costa Rica.
Not because Victor was better at international investigation than federal authorities.
Because Keene had continued receiving money from an account tied to an old Moretti pension structure.
Money Victor recognized.
Keene returned under a cooperation agreement.
His statement was devastating.
Matteo had paid him.
Bellini supplied the men.
The bridge brakes had been sabotaged by a mechanic who died eighteen months later.
The intention was for Dominic and Anna to die together.
But Dominic escaped.
Anna was pulled from the river by Bellini’s men, who had been waiting downstream to confirm the job.
When they discovered she was alive, they took her to Keene’s clinic.
Matteo wanted the problem eliminated.
Keene hesitated.
Eleanor acted first.
Dominic listened to the recorded statement in silence.
Then asked one question.
“Why did Matteo need me dead if he already had influence?”
Keene swallowed.
“Your father’s succession structure.”
Dominic already knew.
“Anna made it worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“After Claire died, you changed your will.”
Dominic remembered.
Everything to Anna.
Voting interests.
Trusts.
Property.
“Matteo learned.”
Keene nodded.
“He said if you died and Anna lived, he would spend twenty years waiting for control while trustees managed everything for her.”
Victor whispered, “Jesus.”
Keene looked down.
“So both had to disappear.”
Dominic left the interview room.
He made it to the hallway before punching the wall.
Once.
Not because it helped.
Because rage needed somewhere to go that was not a person.
Hannah—
No.
There was no Hannah in this story.
Eleanor stood twenty feet away.
She had come to give another statement.
She watched him.
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Dominic looked at her.
She approached.
“Men like Matteo count on you becoming exactly what people expect when you’re angry.”
Dominic wiped blood from his knuckles.
“What do people expect?”
“That you stop thinking.”
He hated that she was right.
His phone rang.
Lily’s school.
Everything inside him stopped.
He answered immediately.
“Moretti.”
The principal’s voice was breathless.
“Mr. Moretti, Lily is safe.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
Any sentence beginning that way meant something terrible had happened.
“What happened?”
“A man came to pick her up.”
Victor was already moving.
“Who?”
“He had paperwork.”
“What paperwork?”
“Emergency guardianship authorization.”
Dominic’s face went cold.
“From whom?”
“Eleanor Hayes.”
Eleanor stared.
“I signed nothing.”
The principal continued.
“The front office called your security number because of the alert you added.”
“Where is the man?”
“He left.”
Victor shouted into his phone.
Lockdown.
Police.
Cameras.
Dominic said, “I’m coming.”
He and Eleanor reached the school in eleven minutes.
Lily sat in the principal’s office holding a juice box with both hands.
The second she saw them, she ran.
Dominic caught her.
“Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Grandma was sick.”
Eleanor knelt.
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
Lily’s voice shook.
“He didn’t know Bun-Bun.”
Dominic frowned.
“What?”
“I asked what Grandma calls my rabbit.”
Eleanor covered her mouth.
Lily continued.
“He said bunny.”
Bun-Bun had been gone for years.
A stuffed rabbit Anna had owned before the crash.
Lily remembered pieces.
Enough pieces to save herself.
The school security footage showed the man clearly.
Victor identified him within an hour.
Paul Rainer.
Former private security.
Currently employed through a company owned by Matteo’s son-in-law.
Dominic looked at the image.
“He tried to take my daughter.”
Victor nodded.
Dominic’s voice became frighteningly calm.
“Now we stop reacting.”
“What are you thinking?”
Dominic looked toward Eleanor.
Then Lily.
“Matteo believes I’m still the man who runs toward whatever makes him angry.”
Victor waited.
Dominic smiled.
“Let’s disappoint him.”
They let Matteo believe the forged pickup attempt had failed without producing useful evidence.
They let him believe Keene’s statement was weak.
They let him believe Dominic planned to move Lily out of New York.
Then Eleanor volunteered for the most dangerous part.
“No.”
Dominic’s answer came immediately.
She stared.
“You need him to make contact.”
“Not with you.”
“He thinks I’m the weak link.”
“He’s wrong.”
“That’s why it works.”
Dominic hated it.
Eleanor continued.
“I hid your daughter for three years. Matteo will believe I’m afraid of prison.”
“You are afraid of prison.”
“Exactly.”
They prepared the meeting with police.
Wires.
Tracking.
Surveillance.
Eleanor called Matteo from a monitored phone.
“I want protection.”
Matteo was silent.
“From Dominic?”
“From everyone.”
“What are you offering?”
Eleanor looked at Dominic.
He nodded once.
“The original necklace. DNA paperwork. Everything tying Lily to Anna.”
Matteo laughed softly.
“You kept her alive three years just to sell her now?”
Eleanor’s face hardened.
“No.”
Then she gave him the line Dominic knew would work.
“I kept her alive because I thought family mattered.”
Matteo said nothing.
Eleanor continued.
“I was wrong.”
A location arrived five minutes later.
Red Hook.
The abandoned clinic.
The place where Anna had first been hidden after the river.
Matteo was going back to where it began.
Dominic checked his weapon.
Detective Ortiz looked at him.
“You do not improvise.”
“I know.”
“You do not move before the team.”
“I know.”
“You do not decide you’re above the arrest plan because you’re Dominic Moretti.”
He looked at her.
“That part seems personal.”
“It is.”
Victor almost smiled.
Dominic put the weapon away.
For Lily.
For Anna.
For the father he intended to become.
This time, Matteo Moretti would not disappear into the private justice of his family.
May you like
He would live long enough to hear every charge.
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